The instant his eyes opened, Lin Luo thought he must be dreaming. Before him: pure white knight armor, dazzling golden hair, a devastatingly beautiful and solemn visage, a sword blazing with brilliance… everything coalesced into the figure of this young woman.
“My… My King?!!” Lin Luo was instantly dumbfounded. Why was his King here? This wasn't the Moonlit World; this was A Certain Magical Index, damn it! Just how much crossover interference was this going to get?!
“Hmph…” Hearing Lin Luo’s words, ABER was clearly startled. Perhaps accustomed to being a King, she paused for only about a second before reacting, her hand instinctively reaching out to the void in a gesture of dismissal. “Very well, dismiss formalities.”
Lin Luo: “……”
Rin Tohsaka: “……”
What incredible presence—My King, are you deliberately putting on an act? After a momentary, awkward silence, it took Lin Luo a while to snap back to reality. He shot Rin a meaningful glance. “Rin, explain what’s going on? Why is ABER here?”
“Um…” Rin’s expression was somewhat complicated. After hesitating briefly, she held up the back of her hand. “Just now, when I saw you defeated, I tried to summon a Servant, and then…”
“You summoned ABER?” Lin Luo exclaimed in shock, the question tumbling out before he could stop it. “Why not Red Saber?”
“Red Saber? What’s that?” Rin countered with a look of confusion.
“Who is Red Saber? Is she a very powerful Heroic Spirit?” ABER was the one who spoke this time, a flicker of displeasure crossing her eyes. “For a Magus as supreme and excellent as Rin, the only one she could summon is naturally me, the strongest and finest Heroic Spirit. Red Saber? Hmph, some unknown nobody?!”
Actually, ABER’s statement could be interpreted inversely: As the strongest and finest Heroic Spirit, the Magus worthy of me can only be the strongest and finest; if Rin summoned any other Heroic Spirit, wouldn’t I be forced to form a contract with some weakling Magus!
It was… dissonant. Hugely dissonant. ABER’s words gave Lin Luo a massive sense of wrongness. In his memory, while the King was incredibly powerful—her Land of Beginning Again could even instantly vaporize Gilgamesh—she never spoke with such arrogant bombast.
Is this truly ABER? Lin Luo found it utterly unbelievable. For a Magus to summon her Servant, there had to be some connection, or at least a close affinity between their natures. For instance, in the Fourth Holy Grail War of the Moonlit World, Kiritsugu Emiya could summon ABER because he possessed the Scabbard of Excalibur’s Vow. In the Fifth War, Shirou summoned ABER because the sheath was inside him... But Rin had no connection to ABER whatsoever. Character-wise, one was the Artoria Pendragon archetype, the other a cunning, proud heiress—they were worlds apart!
Wait!
Suddenly, Lin Luo noticed the knight armor ABER was wearing: white armor! But in the original story, ABER wore blue. Why was it white now?
The Pure White Knight!
Instantly, Lin Luo thought of another iteration of ABER—ABER Lily.
There were actually five different versions: Blue, Black, White, Red, and Lion-ABER. Blue is the original, the true ABER; Black is the corrupted form, also the true ABER; Red ABER is actually Nero Claudius, the Roman tyrant, not Artoria, merely sharing the same Class; as for Lion-ABER, that one could be disregarded.
Those first four ABERs were real entities, at least within the lore of the Moonlit World.
But the White Lily, the Pure White Knight, strictly speaking, did not exist. She was merely a state of ABER—the Land of Beginning Again state.
As a King who also understood normal human emotion, the White ABER was adored, respected, and understood by everyone. She was invincible and unstoppable; she had never suffered betrayal, and her Sword in the Stone remained unbroken. Naturally, with the Sword unbroken, she never possessed the Scabbard of Excalibur’s Vow. In terms of sheer combat power, White ABER surpassed even the true ABER.
The problem was… how could a non-existent ABER become a Heroic Spirit? How could she even be chosen by the Grail? White ABER was just a state of being. Did ABER suddenly become idealized upon being summoned by Rin? If so, where was the real ABER? Had she vanished?
Lin Luo struggled to comprehend this...
Forget it. This was not the time to dwell on that. The thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant, and Lin Luo turned to Rin. “What about those two people from before? Did they retreat?”
“After defeating them, I let them go.”
“I see.” Lin Luo nodded. He had few doubts about that. A Heroic Spirit was equivalent to a demigod; in this world, they were at least on the level of an Angel. Defeating a Saint like Shiori was absolutely not an issue, provided she could fight normally. Whether this was the true ABER or not, her combat prowess was unquestionable. Having such a powerful ally right now was like adding wings to a tiger; the issue of authenticity was secondary.
“Rin, since you’ve summoned ABER, safety is no longer a concern. As long as no more than two Angels attack simultaneously, hardly anyone in this world can harm you. So, the matter of Last Order, I’ll leave it to you.”
Lin Luo’s words greatly pleased ABER, who squinted and nodded repeatedly, but Rin froze. “Then what about you?”
“I have something far more important to do now.” As he spoke, Lin Luo had already turned and strode toward another street ahead.
“But, your injuries…”
“Don’t worry. Your healing spell was quite effective; I’m fine now.” Lin Luo waved a hand without turning back, then pushed his bio-electricity to its limit, shooting forward like an arrow. In the blink of an eye, he vanished at the end of the street.
Staring in the direction Lin Luo had gone, Rin was momentarily lost, still needing many answers clarified. Beside her, ABER spoke calmly. “This human is also strong, though not as strong as I am.”
...
Although Meiling had severed the connection to the Misaka Network, relying on the lingering bond between them and the electrical fluctuations across Academy City, Lin Luo was still able to quickly pinpoint Meiling’s location.
He never expected an Esper Test Subject to appear so quickly, let alone one appearing with the terrifying strength of an Ability Level 5. If he didn't suspect the Villain known as 'The Hanged Man' was manipulating things from behind the scenes, he wouldn't believe it for a second.
Few things in Academy City could be hidden from him. He certainly knew that Tenjou Amagi had created Meiling. If Tenjou Amagi, a mere ordinary researcher, could create Meiling, who was infinitely close to Level 5, then using the data he left behind, it wouldn't be impossible for the inscrutable 'The Hanged Man' to manufacture a true Level 5.
In a battle between two Level 5s possessing the same power, predicting the victor was incredibly difficult. Under normal circumstances, Lin Luo wouldn't worry about Meiling. But now...
He had sensed a death wish in Meiling’s words. The reason for this wasn't hard to understand.
In this world, the people Lin Luo had interacted with the most weren't actually Mikoto, but the Sisters. Through the Misaka Network, he understood some of the Sisters’ thoughts quite well.
The Test Subject was surely created to deal with him, and if he were to die, the survival guarantee for all the Sisters would vanish entirely.
Meiling would never stand idly by while such a thing occurred. Therefore, whether for Lin Luo or for the Sisters, she had to stop this. But the Test Subject was also a Sister.
As the progenitor, as Subject 00000, Meiling had positioned herself as the older sister to all the others. She held the responsibility and obligation to protect every Sister, including the Test Subject.
But now, two extremes had emerged. The Test Subject, an entity generated entirely from negative emotions, would certainly not easily abandon her goals. Thus, if Meiling wanted to protect the regular Sisters, she would have to defeat or even kill the Test Subject. This would directly violate her own beliefs. But if she didn't kill the Test Subject, the ordinary Sisters would be thrust to the brink of death.
No matter what choice she made, some Sisters would inevitably be harmed.
Therefore, Meiling had only one path open to her: sacrifice herself to bring the Test Subject down with her, ensuring the ordinary Sisters remained unharmed, and repaying the death of the Test Subject with her own life...
What an incredibly naive idea, what a tragically inevitable course of action. This was... this was exactly the same as Mikoto had been before!
“You damned idiot!” Pushing his speed to the absolute limit, Lin Luo clenched his fists tightly. “I risked my life to save you all, not to have you end your lives this way, you bastards!”
“Misaka Meiling, Test Subject, I swear, I will give both of you a thorough beating when I get there!”
P: Seeking recommendation votes...